New to GURPS GM magic setting level question

[GameyMcgameface]

That rolls off the tongue nicely doesn't it? Hi all from New Zealand! I've played and run a bit, since 19*cough*83 and recently decided to look at that system to unite all my favourite settings to run, including my gritty Greyahwke campaign. After being disappointed at the level of cotton woolly pap contained in a certain recent release that I should have known better than to buy in the first place, you can imagine how stoked I was to come across GURPS. So aside from saying a hearty "you rock" to SJG, I was wanting to know which of the magic styles best suits a low magic campaign, where magic needs to pulls its weight practically rather than spectacularly, and is low key in its practice. Having just spent a SM-1 fortune on getting print copies of characters and campaigns to NZ, and a few PDF's I know I'll need such help as the low/high/ultra tech books, martial arts, tactical shooting and a few intersest items like the Fairbairn style, I'm naturally keen to just get the sourcebook for the style of magic in my game - if the basic core book of Magic is the one, so be it, but it'll save me time and little cash if I can get the right book first time. The publishers short on Drivethrough didn't have the info on scaling magic in various settings that I need to decide which is best to buy, or whether I just port the system I have (my own) across. Cheers all, and happy gaming!

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by GameyMcgameface

you can imagine how stoked I was to come across GURPS.

First of all, let me just say "Welcome to GURPS"! Always glad to have a new player. :-)

Originally Posted by GameyMcgameface

I was wanting to know which of the magic styles best suits a low magic campaign, where magic needs to pulls its weight practically rather than spectacularly, and is low key in its practice.

You can do this with the magic system in the Basic Set and GURPS Magic. However, you'll have to do some work, mostly in curating which spells are available, and maybe toning down some effects. However, if you want to get a magic system that's a bit closer to this out of the gate, as it were, I'd recommend picking up either GURPS Thaumatology, or GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic. Thaumatology (without a subtitle) is the general GURPS book for customizing your magic system to your tastes. It includes a bunch of modifiers for the Basic Set magic system, but more importantly for your purposes, it includes several other totally new magic systems. I would suggest that you look at the Path/Book system there. That's deliberately designed for a rather low-magic sort of setting, where magic effects typically take long, involved rituals to accomplish, and tend to have effects that could be confused for natural occurrences or coincidences.

Ritual Path Magic has the details of yet another magic system. Like Path/Book, it's designed to involve long-ish rituals rather than quick spellcasting. It's more flexible, however, theoretically capable of doing almost anything, given enough time and skill on the caster's part.

[Refplace]

Welcome to GURPS!
Your going to get different answers based on taste but I think Book/Path magic is the best fit here.
A brief review..
GURPS Basic and GURPS Magic
College or Hawthorne Magic is easy to use and works well at low to medium point levels. It fits the fireball slinging wizards of swords and sandal sorcery pretty well.
GURPS Thaumatology
This goes over regular GURPS Magic and brings some setting based systems from Third Edition to Fourth Edition.
Book/Path Magic is in here and is well suited to a low magic game. Effects typically take longer that the default system and also tend to be less dramatic in power. Though range and duration are sometimes better.
It also has Rune Magic, Realm Magic and a lot of ideas for variations.

GURPS Thaumatology Sorcery
Powers based magic system so can be point intensive and dramatic.

GURPS Thaumatology Ritual Path Magic
Very flexible system but I think too powerful for what you want. However it was introduced in Monster Hunters which is a secret magic setting. Think Buffy verse.

[(E)]

One note if you chose to go with "Gurps magic" the spell list covers spells for huge range of settings. I would recommend trimming the list to suit your world.

Also welcome to GURPS from a Northland GM.

[Emerald Cat]

Incantation Magic is another good option. Incantation Magic's Path Skills fits a Low Tech setting better than RPM's default paths.

[hal]

Having used GURPS MAGIC since it first came out back before the 1990's - and used it throughout all of my 30+ years using GURPS MAGIC in campaigns, I'd say that if approached cautiously, you should be able to do well enough.

I always suggest to people first starting off, to buy both GURPS MAGIC for 4e as well as GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC (for GURPS 3rd edition). The spell list from GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC is a bit less prone to problems than is the entire spell list from GURPS MAGIC for 4e. There are some spells I've NEVER permitted in my campaigns largely because they're over the top and genre destructive to the types of games I run. Some aren't allowed without heavy modifications, and some spells, I've modified to make "cheaper" to cast largely because players look at the energy cost for what the spell does and decide to not use the spells (generally the detect foes and other such spells).

If you're interested, take a look at the older Alaconius lectures I wrote back in the day before the FORUMS came into being and GURPSNET was all us fans had back then. ;)

http://www.gurpsnet.org/Archive/Magic/Alaconius/

I cringe when I reread those lectures, as they need editing and could be polished up better, but they did what they needed to back then... they approached the prospect of what life would be like in a world if those spells as listed in GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC really worked, and how they'd be applied etc.

If it were me, and this were a group of new comers to the game system, I'd start out simple and use GURPS MAGIC before I'd start to experiment with the other forms of MAGIC systems currently out there.

I do use GURPS THAUMATOLOGY as well as GURPS CABAL, GURPS SPIRITS, and even GURPS GRIMOIRE for my campaigns, but that's just my personal taste, which may not be the same as yours (or you as the reader now reading this post). For me, I always try to keep in the back of my mind "different strokes for different folks". Some like over the top spells, and fantastic stuff, others, like myself, like to world build for their campaigns, and pay close attention to what magic can and will do to their campaigns.

Case in point? The Bless Plants spell has certain ramifications, that when used with HARN MANOR, become readily apparent, that otherwise would be missed in the larger scheme of things. Having twice the harvest yields, result in twice the manual labor required to harvest the grains/fruits etc - along with twice the labor to separate the edible portions of the yields from the non-edible. Without transportation to carry the food long distance to where the food is required, the food soon rots (in some instances) or - worse yet, becomes valued more cheaply. Historically, once the urban population required less of the population to produce food, the work force shifted to a higher urban population.

Example:
Normal farming requires 9 families rural to support 1 family urban (non-farming, which includes nobility, craftsmen, etc). If each farmer produces 1 unit worth of food production, that means that each family requires .9 food units to sustain themselves. The "surplus" for the non-rural family would be 1 unit of food -.9 (required for the farmer to feed his family AND have sufficient seed stock for the next season), or .1 food units surplus. .1 units surplus x 9 families producing surpluses = .9 food units, that which is needed to sustain the one non-rural family. This matches the historical ratio of 9 rural families per 1 non-rural family in medieval times.

Now, double the food units (because of the Bless Plants bonus). Each family still requires .9 units of food, but 2 units -.9 leaves us with 1.1 surplus food units! Now? With doubled food yields, the fantasy farmers need only have ONE farmer per ONE Non-Farmer. That state of affairs didn't exist until shortly after the start of the 20th century.

As such - you don't have to have a college education to use GURPS or see what effects MAY occur in your game world. But if you care about world building to where you try to make things work with internal self-consistency, well, you have to think things through if you can. ;)

If you don't care about that kind of stuff, then go for it - and ignore such implications. It isn't THAT important if you just want to have fun, recreate a movie, or what have you.

[AlexanderHowl]

The Agrarian magic section in Fantasy goes over the most immediate effects of magic on agriculture. Another thing to consider is the Essential Earth and Earth to Stone combo, which allows mages to create cubic yards of Adamant and Orichalcum from dirt, which would dramatically change the economics of mining and quarrying. If you can make Adamant from dirt, why quarry normal stone? If you can make Orichalcum from dirt, why mine iron?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Agrarian magic section in Fantasy goes over the most immediate effects of magic on agriculture. Another thing to consider is the Essential Earth and Earth to Stone combo, which allows mages to create cubic yards of Adamant and Orichalcum from dirt, which would dramatically change the economics of mining and quarrying. If you can make Adamant from dirt, why quarry normal stone? If you can make Orichalcum from dirt, why mine iron?

atology Urban Magic is amother good source for seeing how it fits in a setting.

[hal]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The Agrarian magic section in Fantasy goes over the most immediate effects of magic on agriculture. Another thing to consider is the Essential Earth and Earth to Stone combo, which allows mages to create cubic yards of Adamant and Orichalcum from dirt, which would dramatically change the economics of mining and quarrying. If you can make Adamant from dirt, why quarry normal stone? If you can make Orichalcum from dirt, why mine iron?

This is why I am a firm proponent of using GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC for the spell lists rather than using GURPS MAGIC unabashedly. It wasn't until GURPS GRIMOIRE coming out, and the newer spells added in GURPS MAGIC for 4e for the first time, that a lot of these "unbalancing" (from a world builder's view) spells were introduced. By removing the bulk of the spells that I consider unbalancing, the GM has a chance to vet the spells in GURPS MAGIC for 4e and determine whether or not they want to allow such spells into the game.

The big thing here - is to find a comfort level that new to GURPS GM's can be comfortable with and say "Oh yeah, I like this" or "Oh no, that has to go!" and be aware that they should do this.

While GURPS FANTASY for 4e is nice (not to be confused with GURPS CLASSIC FANTASY for use with GURPS 1st edition or GURPS 3rd edition) - I found it to be lacking in certain areas. To wit: Spells are cast in CIRCULAR areas (as area spells are circles) and ignore the realities of both real world topology and what is involved with medieval farming. Simply doubling the output of food isn't enough - you also have to increase the labor to handle the food in its rawest form. Then the issue of what happens to food in medieval times (lack of refrigeration, lack of transporation ability, etc) along with the fact that GURPS MAGIC failed to address the issue of Land exhaustion when one over uses the land.

Again, if you don't care about world building issues - none of the things I mention are an issue. If you DO care about world building issues, then certain aspects of GURPS MAGIC leap out as being a problem.

Just as a fun mind experiment - try to imagine life in a game world in which technology starts at zero, and build up from there. Who invented the first spell? (The domain of the GM to be sure!). How did the first mage teach the second mage? What power structures evolved over time (by power, I mean political). Did the first "Kill the mage" mentality evolve as a result of those tribes unlucky enough to have their own mage being envious of those who did?

GURPS MAGIC (in any edition) ignores the fact that time had to pass such that Magery 3 based spells could only be researched by those with Magery 3, taught to students by Magery 3 teachers to Magery 3 students. This means that the implications of spell discovery are a little bit different for a world builder than for someone playing GURPS for the first time and learning all about what is involved with GURPS MAGIC.

Having access to all of the "Rain" spells that rain destruction upon targets fails to deal with the issue of how the defenders have to contend with that issue. Much of history and the march of technology deals with what is termed "the arms race". Someone builds the offensive weapon, and someone builds a better defense. Once someone builds a better defense, the attackers are set back until they find a way to counter the better defense. Thus it would happen with magic - and GURPS MAGIC sort of doesn't incorporate that strategy. The only way to build up fast walls is to use magic right? Magic on the other hand, can render the walls useless and introduce aerial bombing long before Technology invents the lighter than air balloons or the heavier than air aircraft. Having a mage grant a bunch of armed men (archers for instance) be able to take the height advantage via magic, and rain arrows down on the wall defenders makes the use of walls superfluous - whether made from stone or adamantine or what have you.

As I allude to often - if the GM doesn't care about such issues, then go for it. If the GM does care, then he has to do the weeding in his garden of spells and determine what goes, and what stays.

Keep in mind, GURPS evolved over time as far as the magic spells go. GURPS FANTASY 1st edition (the originator of both the World of Yrth and the first installation of spells for GURPS) had a pretty limited spell list. The original game rules for GURPS FANTASY 1st edition did not allow for "Magery 0" nor did it allow for Magery to be increased save by use of Wishes or by Diety fiat. When a mage was "born" its Magery level never changed. GURPS MAGIC 1st edition expanded out from that original spell list, but even THAT book had changes within that rendered the first edition of GURPS MAGIC different than that of the soon to follow 2nd edition. Even then, the spells started to make building the background for Yrth nearly impossible (ie contradictions in the background began to occur when one took a strict reading of the spell list available at that time). By the time of GURPS GRIMOIRE (which had birthing problems that included two authors and from my recollection, a spotty playtest series) certain things were in direct contradiction to a "Simple Tech level 3 game world design". In GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition, a mage with a skill 12 in ENCHANTMENT could still produce magic items with a power value of 15 by spending extra time in the enchantment process (1.6 times longer to be precise - as he needed to trade an extra 60% time to gain a +3 bonus to enchantment skill). Sadly, GURPS MAGIC for 4e removed this functionality, which was the result of a single sentence that was omitted from GURPS MAGIC 3rd edition (for GURPS 4e) that had been present since GURPS FANTASY 1st edition and GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition. That line? Page 19 of GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition (now known as GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC) that reads in the section on Slow and sure enchantment:

"This method can be combined with “energy for skill” (p. 15/B151), to let a
mage take a very long time and increase his effective skill."

Various spells have changed since the first edition of GURPS FANTASY as well, which can adversely affect world building, but that's neither here nor there. A GM who wants to create a game world for his players can either build it with the philosophy of "use it as writ" or they can approach it from the perspective of "what will my players attempt to do with the spells?" which is a subset of world building in the sense of "If the player character mages would do this, what did the NPC mages attempt to do with those spells in the game historical past?"

That was in a large part, what drove the Alaconius Lectures back when all us GURPS fans had, was GURPSNET mailing list. Now? Were I to try and build up a series of lectures on GURPS MAGIC as it is in GURPS 4th edition, I'd simply stare in horror at the implications of the various spells. Anthony once pointed out, that the use of the ENGLARGE spell could be used to create black holes because of the doubling effects of the spell as written. I pointed out the use of EARTH TO METAL early on with GURPS GRIMOIRE and so on. Some spells are just plain genre wrecking at the levels in GURPS MAGIC. Had it been done such that there was a higher magery requisite for the problematical spells, or the energy requirements ramped up to make it all but out of reach of mages without circle spell casting or large power stone reservoirs - those spells might not have been so problematical.

In the end? GURPS MAGIC for 4e should have been vetted before publication - and this from the mind of someone who is a FAN of GURPS MAGIC. I get the feeling that many of the newer magic systems that came into being after GURPS MAGIC came into existence largely due to the dissatisfaction of people with the final GURPS MAGIC product. While I AM a fan of having a series of guidelines for the creation of spells and a structure to work within (something that GURPS MAGIC fails), I do not like having to build by hand, the 800+ spells from GURPS MAGIC using RITUAL MAGIC rules or SORCERY rules etc.

I liked the original rules where magery came in flavors of magery 1, 2 or 3 (but no higher) or having demographics spelled out that for every magery 3 mages, there were 10 magery 2 mages. For every 10 magery 2 mages, there were 100 magery 1 mages. For every 100 people walking about, only 2% were mageborn.

Those "Implications" help guide a world building GM to try and imagine what living in his GURPS universe might be like. It gives the GM an opportunity to breathe life into his creation in his own mind's eye before he tries to describe it for his player's consumption. It also helps maybe, to give him a means from building from square one up to current times in his game world, how magic evolved, how society evolved, and why things are the way they are in his game world.

Imagine a world in which mageborn are slaves to the mundanes in power (kings and Emperors) because by law, they must work for the King or Emperor. Granted, they are gilded slaves with seeming endless luxury - but they are slaves to the laws that prohibit them from choosing how to live their lives. Conversely, imagine a world in which mages are forbidden to interfere with the power monger's world and are limited to casting spells that do not cause wanton distruction. On and on it goes - but those are WORLD BUILDING exercises, not "take it off the shelf and run a game world NOW without much thought other than to say that it is vaguely medieval ish..."

;)

[maximara]

Originally Posted by hal

This is why I am a firm proponent of using GURPS CLASSIC MAGIC for the spell lists rather than using GURPS MAGIC unabashedly. It wasn't until GURPS GRIMOIRE coming out, and the newer spells added in GURPS MAGIC for 4e for the first time, that a lot of these "unbalancing" (from a world builder's view) spells were introduced. By removing the bulk of the spells that I consider unbalancing, the GM has a chance to vet the spells in GURPS MAGIC for 4e and determine whether or not they want to allow such spells into the game.

The big thing here - is to find a comfort level that new to GURPS GM's can be comfortable with and say "Oh yeah, I like this" or "Oh no, that has to go!" and be aware that they should do this.

While GURPS FANTASY for 4e is nice (not to be confused with GURPS CLASSIC FANTASY for use with GURPS 1st edition or GURPS 3rd edition) - I found it to be lacking in certain areas.

Originally Posted by hal

To wit: Spells are cast in CIRCULAR areas (as area spells are circles) and ignore the realities of both real world topology and what is involved with medieval farming. Simply doubling the output of food isn't enough - you also have to increase the labor to handle the food in its rawest form. Then the issue of what happens to food in medieval times (lack of refrigeration, lack of transporation ability, etc) along with the fact that GURPS MAGIC failed to address the issue of Land exhaustion when one over uses the land.

IIRC even in 3e GURPS there was a provision to change how the area was covered but it cost more mana.

GURPS 4e Magic does have spells that address the issues you raise such as Cook and Preserve Food. Land exhaustion is dealt with via Essential Earth ("Essential Earth is three times as fertile: plants germinate three times faster and grow three times taller or bigger than normal.")

Originally Posted by hal

Again, if you don't care about world building issues - none of the things I mention are an issue. If you DO care about world building issues, then certain aspects of GURPS MAGIC leap out as being a problem.

Just as a fun mind experiment - try to imagine life in a game world in which technology starts at zero, and build up from there. Who invented the first spell? (The domain of the GM to be sure!). How did the first mage teach the second mage? What power structures evolved over time (by power, I mean political). Did the first "Kill the mage" mentality evolve as a result of those tribes unlucky enough to have their own mage being envious of those who did?

These are a host of social factors that really are beyond what most GMs are going to do. Go back and take apart the old D&D settings of Grayhawk or Forbidden Lands and ask those very same questions. Doesn't really fit does it?

I should point out that GURPS Magic is not a world building book; it is effectively a spell list. GURPS 4e Fantasy and GURPS Thaumatology are your world building books.

Originally Posted by hal

GURPS MAGIC (in any edition) ignores the fact that time had to pass such that Magery 3 based spells could only be researched by those with Magery 3, taught to students by Magery 3 teachers to Magery 3 students. This means that the implications of spell discovery are a little bit different for a world builder than for someone playing GURPS for the first time and learning all about what is involved with GURPS MAGIC.

Actually research and use are two wildly different things.

Thaumatology (the "science" of Magic) has a series of "laws". Isaac Bonewits' Authentic Thaumaturgy has 26 of them regarding how magic supposedly "works" in our world: The Law of Knowledge, Self-Knowledge, Cause & Effect, Synchronicity, Association, Similarity, Contagion, Positive Attraction, Negative Attraction, Names, Words of Power, Personification, Invocation, Evocation, Identification, Infinite Data, Finite Senses, Personal Universes, Infinite Universes, Pragmatism, True Falsehoods, Synthesis, Polarity, Dynamic Balance, Perversity, and Unity.

If such "laws" can be formed in a world where magic does't work then them forming in a world where it does is a given.

Originally Posted by hal

(the issue of "the arms race")

To be fair I have yet to see any world where magic is common and repeatable that thinks through this point. Heck, in AD&D1 a Wizard's fireball was 33,000 cubic yards of flaming death outdoors (feet became yards). How in the name of sanity do you defend against that?

Originally Posted by hal

Keep in mind, GURPS evolved over time as far as the magic spells go. GURPS FANTASY 1st edition (the originator of both the World of Yrth and the first installation of spells for GURPS) had a pretty limited spell list. The original game rules for GURPS FANTASY 1st edition did not allow for "Magery 0" nor did it allow for Magery to be increased save by use of Wishes or by Diety fiat.

Actually Blessed worked as a defacto Magery 0 and there was Improvised Spell (chapter 4) with its alternative magic systems. It wasn't much but it was there.

Originally Posted by hal

In the end? GURPS MAGIC for 4e should have been vetted before publication - and this from the mind of someone who is a FAN of GURPS MAGIC.

This I fully agree with. GURPS 4e Magic felt rushed as spells that had corrections in 3e were taken verbatim from the original books. Then you had spells like Planar Summons and Summon Demon which other then very minor details were the same spell.

Originally Posted by hal

I get the feeling that many of the newer magic systems that came into being after GURPS MAGIC came into existence largely due to the dissatisfaction of people with the final GURPS MAGIC product.

If you mean GURPS 1e Magic I agree. GURPS 3e magic; less so. By that time Ritual Magic and Power Investiture were a "thing". That GURPS 4e Fantasy came out the same year as GURPS 4e Magic shows they knew that as a world building book GURPS 4e Magic was horrid. But GURPS 4e Fantasy on its own wasn't enough so we got GURPS Thaumatology....4 years later.

Originally Posted by hal

I liked the original rules where magery came in flavors of magery 1, 2 or 3 (but no higher) or having demographics spelled out that for every magery 3 mages, there were 10 magery 2 mages. For every 10 magery 2 mages, there were 100 magery 1 mages. For every 100 people walking about, only 2% were mageborn.

But the demographics had issues: "Since Caithness is a low-mana area, the example given for the number of people to know spells is wrong. 1 in 50 might know a spell or two in a high-mana area, 1 in 100 in a normal-mana area, 1 in 500 in a low-mana area. Perhaps half these people possess Magical Aptitude." Why in the name of sanity would a non mage who was in a low or normal learn a spell?!?